Into the Shadows

Somebody catch Devon!!

It was a normal night of Poker with Ben and Janice up on six in the common area. Nothing too over the top, although I think they may have been watering down the bourbon to try and keep me from getting as ripped as I usually do. Oh yeah, and Janice invited some spooky actor dude to the game. Peter Blackspike, no that’s not right, … Blackthorn, yeah that was it. I guess she was hoping to get an autograph, or maybe she’s one of them actor groupie sorts and was hoping to get lucky with him. Whatever the case, he brought cash, and I was sober enough to play straight, so, I’m figuring that’s more money in my pocket right?

Anyway, Janice headed off to get some snacks from her kitchen down on the 5th floor where all of us except Ben live, but there was some trouble with the elevator. Liz and I headed over to see if there was something we could do. What, me? I could stand there and watch the thing while they worked on it, I mean, what good’s a freaking P.I. or security guard for a broken elevator?! But then something happened that peaked my interest. Three gunshots were heard from upstairs. Two in rapid succession and after a short pause a third. Then the lights started flickering, the power went all freakadellic on us. Out of nowhere a huge thunderstorm kicks up outside, and we hear these weird moans and scratching noises from below us on the fifth floor. So that’s when Janice and Ben lost their shit! So I dumped them two back at the poker tables while Liz, Mr. Blackthorn and I headed down to to see what was going on our floor.

The elevator was busted, the stair doors were jammed shut, and with all the freakiness going on I was beginning to think I had run a couple beers short of a full six pack. We could only get to three floors on the elevator, from five up to penthouse suite where that rich guy hung his hat. I didn’t really know him well myself, but he seemed ok when I saw him on the elevator a few times. He got one of my letters at the post boxes once too, even brought it to my door. It said I had won some publishers something or another, I threw it out. Freaking junk mail.

Looking out the window we see nothing, and when I say nothing, I don’t mean nothing unusual. I mean there was a lack of anything to look at. It was like someone had dropped a black tarp over the entire building. We couldn’t see the ground, we couldn’t see stars, there wasn’t that old oak tree in the quad outside our apartment building, it was an unnatural blackness. Dark like gone blind sort of dark.

We saw some chick in the hall on 5 when the elevator got there, but she was sorta, … look I know what this sounds like, but the bitch was see-through! I’m serious, I could look right through her. Liz grabbed her gun out of her apartment and we started back up to check on Ben and Jessica. That’s when the walls started to peal like they were burning and we were hearing more distant screams and shit. I figured Liz might be a little jumpy, and what with her being armed and all, I tried to calm her some, didn’t want some daffy broad shooting up the place cause the light show was too edgy.

We got back to the tables, but Ben and Janice had split. So we headed over to Ben’s apartment and they were hiding in there. So we all decided to go upstairs to see who was left breathing after the gunfight. Turned out, nobody was. Breathing I mean, there were folks there, just all see through and shit again. So yeah, I’m figuring now that Janice didn’t water down the bourbon, she spiked the shit with some hallucinogenic acid or something. But that ain’t even the freakiest part, get this, one of the dead bodies on the floor – his fucking ghost was floating there above his body while it was getting cold. And the shit didn’t stop there! The freaking ghost talked to us! … It said something about the old dude who used to live in the manor going nutzo and this creepy stalker type who lived downstairs had stolen his watch or something. Anyway, if we get the watch and destroy it by hanging it on the lightening rod outside in the storm, the ghost says it’ll turn all this freaky crap back to normal… Well I didn’t have any better ideas, so we went down to stalker dudes apartment.